Cooker hob safety

[GASMAN10]

I've been called to go to a job tonight, the hob is an arrow hob, having looked on the internet I think that this company has gone bust.

Customer has said it was sparking every two minutes and the ignition has now gone bang with sparks!

Customer has turned gas off, can anyone help me as to what this may be please as I haven't got the MI?????

Many thanks.

 

[Mbear]

If the company have went bust and no other manufacturer has taken on the parts then I don't suppose there's alot u can do. If the punter doesn't want a replacement fitted then they could just use a lighter or match to light the hob. If the hob is fed by mains power for the sparker, i may be a decent idea to check polarity at the appliance just to prove no issues at the switch or further upstream

 

[Blackcatgas]

This usauly happens when the custard has cleaned the hob with a very wet sponge, I bet its not doing it when you get there as its dried out.

 

[Puddle]

Arrow was surprise, surprise a B&Q import ,you can no longer get parts, how a big company like that can shirk its legal responsibility of after sales service, when they decide to stop cheap imports, who am I to ask
The ignition is probably sticking due to a degreaser used in cleaning, try a grease around ignition to allow to move freely
Failing that, the ignition is an optional extra and not part of the gas safety of the appliance, therefore cut off power supply and give home dwelling operatives a ignition gun or torch, maybe give them a slight discount if required and claim it back by accidently walking through the auto pay machines at said store,with a few mistakenly placed items in your pockets

imho

 

[Bernie2]

Do you like sugar or salt on your porridge?

I am sure B and Q will help you get it, if you purloin some of their expensive stuff.

They should be made to support people properly not charge what they like and do what they like. I often wonder if they are not getting mixed up between the gems industry and the construction, the prices they charge for their stuff seem more in line with the gem than the construction

 

[prs1]

Agreed bernie once over B & Q were the cheapest of the lot by far.
NOT NOW!
Cant realy see a differance in the quality either-main offender for punting out millions of FOCAL POINTS -UGHHHHHHHHHHHH! would sir like a catylitic converter on that

 

[GASMAN10]

Hi

Went there and disconnected the elect to the hob, all safe now. Is replacing the hob in future, so will fit it.

He had phoned on Friday a national 24/7 company, who quoted him £125 and someone would come on Monday!!

I charged him £20 for 1/2 hour work, got the job to fit new hob and service his boiler in future!!

Many thanks for your help

 

[Puddle]

Hi



He had phoned on Friday a national 24/7 company, who quoted him £125 and someone would come on Monday!!

I charged him £20 for 1/2 hour work, got the job to fit new hob and service his boiler in future!!

Many thanks for your help

Do not know were you are and you can charge what you wish, your business but would think £20 a bit cheap in this instance, don’t under sell yourself, however hope you get future works from good charge and service given

 

[tamz]

Was about to repeat what puddle said. Minimum charge for me is 54 + vat. Don't undersell yourself.

 

[Bernie2]

What does under sell yourself mean?

Any human is worth a fortune.

As to what your labour is worth? The market will decide what they want to pay. You can of course fix your own rates and of course you can get no work if you want.

But the less you get can make you more efficient in how you manage your costs and so more competitive.

Easy money can make you lazy and cause people to have to pay more than they should, raising the cost of living all round.

Fair enough as a company you are obliged to work in its best interests all the time, which basically seems to mean pay out least, get most.

Perhaps though, there is a point where that becomes self defeating and customers turn their noses up at your charges and try DIY instead.

And lets be honest with the law on their side, gas fitters have got the public in a no win position when it comes to prices haven't they?

I feel a more considered approach is required to doing business today, considering what appears to perhaps be the sort of cut backs the country is facing.

One way would be to bring a companies training overheads and insurance premiums down to a reasonable level. So if the running cost base is lower, then they can afford to lower prices and still maintain profit margins.

 

[tamz]

Bernie

I beg to differ with you. Undersell yourself means in this case £20 is too cheap. He may only have been there for half an hour but unless it is the house next door, he also had to travel there so his time was more than that.
Do you think £20 for perhaps an hour less overheads is a fair rate. It may be the only job he did that day so around £15 for his days wages? How does he manage his costs on that? 2 pot noodles for the dinner? He could get £15/hour working for someone. The customer is paying for not only his time but for his knowledge.

I was speaking to a joiner friend recently and he told me of a customer who had come to him for a price to mitre 2 worktop joints. He quoted £120 (£60 a cut). The person decided he was too expensive as he could hire a router and a jig for £25. Fair enough. 2 days later he was back, could he have the job done. Joiner went to the house and customers wife told him her man had hired a router and wasted 3 worktops. Total cost for the job was 180 for the extra worktops + 25 to hire the router + 120 for the joiner. You pay for the knowledge and the experience too.

A company (or sole trader for that matter) has to base their prices to cover their costs plus profit. Training and insurance overheads are only a small part of that.
A one man band may have small overheads with just have himself to worry about, gas competencies, public liability, advertising, an old van to run, tools and plant to buy, accountant to pay etc etc and will base his prices to cover his costs but you can be, no matter how tight he runs things his overheads are over £100 a week.

A Small to medium sized company will have higher overheads. Perhaps an office/workshop to run and staff, public and employers liability, training costs for every employee, pensions, trade affiliations, health and safety management etc etc the list grows and grows plus you can guarantee that not every employee is making money all the time ( they all like a skive or an early finish) but still require paying. Prices then have to rise accordingly.
Some sections of the market may decide they want to pay less and less and they will get the type of work done they deserve, but others will pay for quality work.
I don't cut my prices to compete with anyone but i do charge a fair rate for the job and i am never short of work, at the moment i am starting to book jobs in for September. I don't make vast amounts of money and have at the moment 3 employees.
People get, on the whole, what they pay for. Pay peanuts and you will normally get monkeys.

 

[wards]

Bernie

I beg to differ with you. Undersell yourself means in this case £20 is too cheap. He may only have been there for half an hour but unless it is the house next door, he also had to travel there so his time was more than that.
Do you think £20 for perhaps an hour less overheads is a fair rate. It may be the only job he did that day so around £15 for his days wages? How does he manage his costs on that? 2 pot noodles for the dinner? He could get £15/hour working for someone. The customer is paying for not only his time but for his knowledge.

I was speaking to a joiner friend recently and he told me of a customer who had come to him for a price to mitre 2 worktop joints. He quoted £120 (£60 a cut). The person decided he was too expensive as he could hire a router and a jig for £25. Fair enough. 2 days later he was back, could he have the job done. Joiner went to the house and customers wife told him her man had hired a router and wasted 3 worktops. Total cost for the job was 180 for the extra worktops + 25 to hire the router + 120 for the joiner. You pay for the knowledge and the experience too.

A company (or sole trader for that matter) has to base their prices to cover their costs plus profit. Training and insurance overheads are only a small part of that.
A one man band may have small overheads with just have himself to worry about, gas competencies, public liability, advertising, an old van to run, tools and plant to buy, accountant to pay etc etc and will base his prices to cover his costs but you can be, no matter how tight he runs things his overheads are over £100 a week.

A Small to medium sized company will have higher overheads. Perhaps an office/workshop to run and staff, public and employers liability, training costs for every employee, pensions, trade affiliations, health and safety management etc etc the list grows and grows plus you can guarantee that not every employee is making money all the time ( they all like a skive or an early finish) but still require paying. Prices then have to rise accordingly.
Some sections of the market may decide they want to pay less and less and they will get the type of work done they deserve, but others will pay for quality work.
I don't cut my prices to compete with anyone but i do charge a fair rate for the job and i am never short of work, at the moment i am starting to book jobs in for September. I don't make vast amounts of money and have at the moment 3 employees.
People get, on the whole, what they pay for. Pay peanuts and you will normally get monkeys.

totaly agree with you tamz

 

[tr7dan]

Bernie

I beg to differ with you. Undersell yourself means in this case £20 is too cheap. He may only have been there for half an hour but unless it is the house next door, he also had to travel there so his time was more than that.
Do you think £20 for perhaps an hour less overheads is a fair rate. It may be the only job he did that day so around £15 for his days wages? How does he manage his costs on that? 2 pot noodles for the dinner? He could get £15/hour working for someone. The customer is paying for not only his time but for his knowledge.

I was speaking to a joiner friend recently and he told me of a customer who had come to him for a price to mitre 2 worktop joints. He quoted £120 (£60 a cut). The person decided he was too expensive as he could hire a router and a jig for £25. Fair enough. 2 days later he was back, could he have the job done. Joiner went to the house and customers wife told him her man had hired a router and wasted 3 worktops. Total cost for the job was 180 for the extra worktops + 25 to hire the router + 120 for the joiner. You pay for the knowledge and the experience too.

A company (or sole trader for that matter) has to base their prices to cover their costs plus profit. Training and insurance overheads are only a small part of that.
A one man band may have small overheads with just have himself to worry about, gas competencies, public liability, advertising, an old van to run, tools and plant to buy, accountant to pay etc etc and will base his prices to cover his costs but you can be, no matter how tight he runs things his overheads are over £100 a week.

A Small to medium sized company will have higher overheads. Perhaps an office/workshop to run and staff, public and employers liability, training costs for every employee, pensions, trade affiliations, health and safety management etc etc the list grows and grows plus you can guarantee that not every employee is making money all the time ( they all like a skive or an early finish) but still require paying. Prices then have to rise accordingly.
Some sections of the market may decide they want to pay less and less and they will get the type of work done they deserve, but others will pay for quality work.
I don't cut my prices to compete with anyone but i do charge a fair rate for the job and i am never short of work, at the moment i am starting to book jobs in for September. I don't make vast amounts of money and have at the moment 3 employees.
People get, on the whole, what they pay for. Pay peanuts and you will normally get monkeys.

Absolutely spot on. Couldn't agree more Tamz !

Why on earth would anyone want to work for less than you need to earn a decent wage. Charging too little for a job is every bit as destructive as charging rip-off prices.

The problem with charging a pittance in the hope of gaining future jobs is the fact that the customer will be expecting you to charge a pittance for everything else you do. They will then tell their friends "oh, I used so and so, he's DEAD cheap". Better that they tell their friends "he's not the cheapest you can get.... but he's reliable and does a cracking good job"

The maths is simple enough:- annual overheads plus what you need to live on divided by the number of weeks in the year you can work gives you a MINIMUM rate to charge.

Do not work for less than this figure or you are working at a loss.

If the job will stand it then set a higher price. This will generate profits, which can then be used to improve the business, buy a better van, invest in better equipment or even to take a better wage for a more comfortable lifestyle.

Dan

 

[Bernie2]

The problem is not only the amount of profit taken. We all know the overheads.

Wages and many other things are not counted as profit, but the client still pays them.

So if you run a fleet of sign written vans and dress up in tailored overalls to impress people at the end of the day the customer foots the bill.

And lets be honest part of the reason people hire accountants, is so that they can minimise tax payments whilst many PAYE people do not get the choice about it.

But don't get me wrong I have nothing against people who do this, that is up to them, but if they get little work because their prices are too high then they have a problem.

As to working for some one else, yes you could get £12 per hour but the employer would probably make at least 200% or more on top of that.

Well loads for a company to cover running costs and a profit besides, that is of course the bosses don't expect a Roller as the company car to go with their Spanish villas.

No you must also look at the cost to the customer, not always the cost to you and work within that.

Its a circle really, you may have to pay the garage mechanic £60 an hour, but you probably got the money off your customers to be able to afford it. And if you did a job for the mechanic he would have to get the money off your job for him to pay you.

As to £20 per hour, it all depends of course on the circumstance, you have to cover your running costs, but you also have to watch your running costs. If you get discounts pass them on to your customers don't take them as extra profit.

Its far to easy to look at customers as easy profit centres and overlook your own spending. I seem to have seen many firms go bust doing that.

Lets be honest the big guys are coming and as big contracts dry up they will probably come even more. Those guys can afford tiny margins and trade on high turn over. You may find you have to compete with them.

Lets be honest how many can compete with them now?

Warmfront I think offer £140 a year for all labour and parts on a full heating system including rads and pipework plus an annual service thrown in. And they or so I assume do a nation wide service from Newcastle.

That is the level of competition you are up against. So its a case of trying to match market prices, it ain't easy being a small trader. I do sympathise with small traders but also have to recognise that markets will also dictate prices at times. So its also good to consider the customers interests as well.

 

[tamz]

Bernie i can see from your comments you have never worked for yourself (maybe SC60) as,I think you haven't a clue what you are talking about here.
The whole idea of being self employed is to make a better than average living otherwise why do it. That means making a profit on top of your earnings. You don't become self employed to earn wages. The only ones who don't care about profit are the councils because they have the taxpayer to bail them out.
Have you any idea of the unpaid and unseen work your average self employed guy has to do, if you worked it out he would be on a LOT less hourly rate than your employed guy, some would be below minimum wage. Very few just go home at 5 and sit down.
A one man band will do perhaps 5 different jobs. There are jobs to visit, quotes to work out and put together, materials to source, invoicing to do, bookwork and vat to do and a dozen other things. Most would probably be better off working for someone else but chose not to.
Do you grudge anyone making a success of their life? or would you have all tradesmen running around with the rse out their jeans driving a clapped out van. 1st impressions count for a lot with customers. Most tradesmen try to present a professional image and if that means a decent van and a pair of Helly Hansen overalls then that is their choice. And who cares if they have the big house, the villa in Spain or the BMW in the drive. Most don't but the ones who do have worked a lot harder and risked a lot more than you can imagine.

Your average installer has nothing to fear from the big boys. Their overheads are far too great to compete even if they cut their margins to the bone. Some of them, big gas for instance, are back offering their low cost systems and they may even run at a loss (and they will make a loss before we do even if they do buy their boilers at half price) doing so but it never lasts as it is not sustainable and they have shareholders to please. They have done this a few times before just to get the foot in a few more doors.
Your local guy can still beat them without dropping prices and be more considerate of their customers interests and offer a better service and quality of work too. Most of the big players do not offer the same range of product services your small installer or plumber can. Try phoning one up for an oil boiler change, LPG, electric etc.
As for an idea of how much a big mob would take for a bathroom, talk to the lassie standing at the door of the diy shed and ask her to send someone round. You would need a second mortgage to pay it.

The maintainance contract ones play the numbers game. Get say 1000 customers paying you £140 = £140,000/year. 1 man doing the work 5 jobs/day say £30,000/yr wages.
200 have breakdowns (probably less) with average part costing £100 (most parts will be less) = £20,000 so you are up to £50,000
Add on another 50% for overheads, another 25,000, so £75,000 costs = £65,000 profit from 1 man with lots of room for manouver. Hardly a small margin is it? Times that by 10 or 100 or 1000 and you are talking BIG bucks. They are not stupid.

You are watching too much cowboy tv rubbish. Most tradesmen do NOT rip people off but get tarred with the same brush as the few who do.

Btw I sometimes do small jobs for nothing or for a packet of **** but only if i know you and you are a deserving pensioner.

 

[Bernie2]

Hi! Tamz

Yes I have worked for myself and been a manager as well as other supervisory jobs with loads of companies. I do know the costs involved. I also appreciate I hope what influences the publics decision to buy from companies.

£50 an hour puts a Plumber on par with a surgeons pay, and being frank I don't think the public think a Plumbers or any repair persons wage or prices, self employed or not, are worth that much.

You can't hide behind company expenses to justify high costs.

If you ever work for big companies on contract work you will see what I mean.

Working for private customers, where you dictate to them what you want, is a good position to be in. But if you ain't got any work, you have to take what is on offer and if all the market dictates is £20 per hour, you have to manage your overheads to suite.

It seems pointless trying to discredit people who point that practicality out.

And I feel although £20 an hour is perhaps a bit low. I think you will find many glad of that, if it means as it appears to in this case, a continuity of work.

Anyway its about all the likes of a Housing Association will pay anybody.

 

[tamz]

Bernie i am not having a go but the real world is nothing like working for a housing association or others suchlike.
I have worked for many big companies and still do some contract work and i get a lot more than £20/hr.
If you were subbing to a housing association and they were paying £20/hr for 40 hrs/week that would be a bit low but possibly acceptable to most given the continuity. But £20/hr and we will phone you when we need you i don't think so.
Your average customer can not offer continuity of work, maybe a wee job or 2 a year so they have to pay more. But without robbing anyone you charge a fair rate. Say a days work for a man at different addresses was fit a hob, repair a shower and service a boiler. You could say each job should only take an hour and cost no more than £25 a time plus materials.
In reality it would be more like
fit the hob £60
repair shower £60
service boiler £70
Total for the day £190 + materials and vat.
Tradesmans wages for day + emp nat ins and pensions and holiday stamps £131.36
Training, insurances, vehicle fuel and running costs, PPE etc etc, say another £30 (it's a bit more but i can't be bothered to work it out)
Total profit for the day from 1 man = £28.64. Hardly excessive is it, around 15% profit?

If you worked for a housing association you will know when your plumber gets sent to rewasher a tap or some other wee job he gets something ridiculous like 5 minutes for, that is not what is on his timesheet when he hands it in. They start inventing things to fill the time out with. Cant turn the water off, change broken gate valve - 1.5hrs extra and so on.
Fitting a hob with them would probably need 3 trades. Plumber/gas fitter to connect it, joiner to cut it out and electrician to wire it and maybe the inspector round to check it plus you have got the administration side too. How much do you think that lot would add up to. A bit more than £60 i would think even if they got contractors to do it. They are hardly cost efficient orginisations.

Did a job for our council a few years back. Got the BoQ and priced accordingly. Supposedly replace lead lined stepped gutters. Went to first job and they were all felt gutters and the pitch was too shallow to step it. Nobody had bothered to check and just made out a BoQ. After a bit palaver with the architects, clerk of works and a few other council big wigs, it was decided to use Tpren. Full job done on time and line, 117 gutters. Cost over twice what it should have. Never once did it cross my mind to say hey, you are paying me too much here.

Do you think a surgeon would think £50/hr was excessive when the sewage was running down his driveway. He has probably had his hands in worse and it is not hard to fix but i think he would prefer to "sub it out"